Seven Year War
The Seven Years War was a global conflict fought between 1756 and 1763. It involved every European great power of the time and spanned five continents, affecting Europe, the Americas, West Africa, India, and the Philippines. The conflict split Europe into two coalitions, led by the Kingdom of Great Britain (including Prussia, Portugal, Hanover, and other small German states) on one side and the Kingdom of France (including the Austrian-led Holy Roman Empire, the Russian Empire, Bourbon Spain, and Sweden) on the other. Meanwhile, in India, some regional polities within the increasingly fragmented Mughal Empire, with the support of the French, tried to crush a British attempt to conquer Bengal. The war's extent has led some historians to describe it as "World War Zero", similar in scale to other world wars. Although Anglo-French skirmishes over their American colonies had begun with what became the French and Indian War in 1754, the large-scale conflict that drew in most of the European powers was centered on Austria's desire to recover Silesia from the Prussians. Seeing the opportunity to curtail Britain's and Prussia's ever-growing might, France and Austria put aside their ancient rivalry to form a grand coalition of their own, bringing most of the other European powers to their side. Faced with this sudden turn of events, Britain aligned itself with Prussia, in a series of political manoeuvres known as the Diplomatic Revolution. However, French efforts ended in failure when the Anglo-Prussian coalition prevailed, and Britain's rise as among the world's predominant powers destroyed France's supremacy in Europe, thus altering the European balance of power. ''History 'Europe' In the War of the Austrian Succession, which lasted from 1740 to 1748, King Frederick II of Prussia, known as Frederick the Great, seized the prosperous province of Silesia from Austria. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria had signed the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 in order to gain time to rebuild her military forces and forge new alliances. The War of the Austrian Succession had seen the belligerents aligned on a time-honoured basis. France's traditional enemies, Great Britain and Austria, had coalesced just as they had done against Louis XIV. Prussia, the leading anti-Austrian state in Germany, had been supported by France. Neither group, however, found much reason to be satisfied with its partnership: British subsidies to Austria produced nothing of much help to the British, while the British military effort had not saved Silesia for Austria. Prussia, having secured Silesia, came to terms with Austria in disregard of French interests. Even so, France concluded a defensive alliance with Prussia in 1747, and the maintenance of the Anglo-Austrian alignment after 1748 was deemed essential by the Duke of Newcastle, British secretary of state in the ministry of his brother Henry Pelham. The collapse of that system and the aligning of France with Austria and of Great Britain with Prussia constituted what is known as the "diplomatic revolution" or the "reversal of alliances." In 1756 Austria was making military preparations for war with Prussia and pursuing an alliance with Russia for this purpose. On 2 June 1746, Austria and Russia concluded a defensive alliance that covered their own territory and Poland against attack by Prussia or the Ottoman Empire. They also agreed to a secret clause that promised the restoration of Silesia and the countship of Glatz (now Kłodzko, Poland) to Austria in the event of hostilities with Prussia. Their real desire, however, was to destroy Frederick's power altogether, reducing his sway to his electorate of Brandenburg and giving East Prussia to Poland, an exchange that would be accompanied by the cession of the Polish Duchy of Courland to Russia. Alexey Bestuzhev-Ryumin, grand chancellor of Russia under Empress Elizabeth, was hostile to both France and Prussia, but he could not persuade Austrian statesman Wenzel Anton von Kaunitz to commit to offensive designs against Prussia so long as Prussia was able to rely on French support. The Hanoverian king George II of Great Britain was passionately devoted to his family's continental holdings, but his commitments in Germany were counterbalanced by the demands of the British colonies overseas. If war against France for colonial expansion was to be resumed, then Hanover had to be secured against Franco-Prussian attack. France was very much interested in colonial expansion and was willing to exploit the vulnerability of Hanover in war against Great Britain, but it had no desire to divert forces to central Europe for Prussia's interest. French policy was, moreover, complicated by the existence of the Secret du Roi—a system of private diplomacy conducted by King Louis XV. Unbeknownst to his foreign minister, Louis had established a network of agents throughout Europe with the goal of pursuing personal political objectives that were often at odds with France's publicly stated policies. Louis's goals for le Secret du roi included the Polish crown for his kinsman Louis François de Bourbon, prince de Conti, and the maintenance of Poland, Sweden, and Turkey as French client states in opposition to Russian and Austrian interests. Frederick saw Saxony and Polish west Prussia as potential fields for expansion but could not expect French support if he started an aggressive war for them. If he joined the French against the British in the hope of annexing Hanover, he might fall victim to an Austro-Russian attack. The hereditary elector of Saxony, Augustus III, was also elective King of Poland as Augustus III, but the two territories were physically separated by Brandenburg and Silesia. Neither state could pose as a great power. Saxony was merely a buffer between Prussia and Austrian Bohemia, whereas Poland, despite its union with the ancient lands of Lithuania, was prey to pro-French and pro-Russian factions. A Prussian scheme for compensating Frederick Augustus with Bohemia in exchange for Saxony obviously presupposed further spoliation of Austria. In the attempt to satisfy Austria at the time, Britain gave their electoral vote in Hanover for the candidacy of Maria Theresa's son, Joseph II, as the Holy Roman Emperor, much to the dismay of Frederick and Prussia. Not only that, Britain would soon join the Austro-Russian alliance, but complications arose. Britain's basic framework for the alliance itself was to protect Hanover's interests against France. At the same time, Kaunitz kept approaching the French in the hope of establishing just such an alliance with Austria. Not only that, France had no intention to ally with Russia, who, years earlier, had meddled in France's affairs during Austria's succession war. France also saw the dismemberment of Prussia as threatening to the stability of Central Europe. Years later, Kaunitz kept trying to establish France's alliance with Austria. He tried as hard as he could to avoid Austrian entanglement in Hanover's political affairs, and was even willing to trade Austrian Netherlands for France's aid in recapturing Silesia. Frustrated by this decision and by the Dutch Republic's insistence on neutrality, Britain soon turned to Russia. On 30 September 1755, Britain pledged financial aid to Russia in order to station 50,000 troops on the Livonian-Lithuanian border, so they could defend Britain's interests in Hanover immediately. Besthuzev, assuming the preparation was directed against Prussia, was more than happy to obey the request of the British. Unbeknownst to the other powers, King George II also made overtures to the Prussian king, Frederick, who, fearing the Austro-Russian intentions, was also desirous of a rapprochement with Britain. On 16 January 1756, the Convention of Westminster was signed, whereby Britain and Prussia promised to aid one another; the parties hoped to achieve lasting peace and stability in Europe. The carefully coded word in the agreement proved no less catalytic for the other European powers. The results were absolute chaos. Empress Elizabeth of Russia was outraged at the duplicity of Britain's position. Not only that, but France was enraged, and terrified, by the sudden betrayal of its only ally. Austria, particularly Kaunitz, used this situation to their utmost advantage. Now-isolated France was forced to accede to the Austro-Russian alliance or face ruin. Thereafter, on 1 May 1756, the First Treaty of Versailles was signed, in which both nations pledged 24,000 troops to defend each other in the case of an attack. This diplomatic revolution proved to be an important cause of the war; although both treaties were self-defensive in nature, the actions of both coalitions made the war virtually inevitable. 'North America' The boundary between British and French possessions in North America was largely undefined in the 1750s. France had long claimed the entire Mississippi River basin. This was disputed by Britain. In the early 1750s the French began constructing a chain of forts in the Ohio River Valley to assert their claim and shield the Native American population from increasing British influence. The British settlers along the coast were upset that French troops would now be close to the western borders of their colonies. They felt the French would encourage their tribal allies among the North American natives to attack them. Also, the British settlers wanted access to the fertile land of the Ohio River Valley for the new settlers that were flooding into the British colonies seeking farm land. The most important French fort planned was intended to occupy a position at "the Forks" where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers meet to form the Ohio River (present day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). Peaceful British attempts to halt this fort construction were unsuccessful, and the French proceeded to build the fort they named Fort Duquesne. British colonial militia from Virginia were then sent to drive them out. Led by George Washington, they ambushed a small French force at Jumonville Glen on 28 May 1754 killing ten, including commander Jumonville. The French retaliated by attacking Washington's army at Fort Necessity on 3 July 1754 and forced Washington to surrender. These were the first engagements of what would become the worldwide Seven Years' War. News of this arrived in Europe, where Britain and France unsuccessfully attempted to negotiate a solution. The two nations eventually dispatched regular troops to North America to enforce their claims. The first British action was the assault on Acadia on 16 June 1755 in the Battle of Fort Beauséjour, which was immediately followed by their expulsion of the Acadians. In July British Major General Edward Braddock led about 2,000 army troops and provincial militia on an expedition to retake Fort Duquesne, but the expedition ended in disastrous defeat. In further action, Admiral Edward Boscawen fired on the French ship Alcide on 8 June 1755, capturing it and two troop ships. In September 1755, British colonial and French troops met in the inconclusive Battle of Lake George. The British also harassed French shipping beginning in August 1755, seizing hundreds of ships and capturing thousands of merchant seamen while the two nations were nominally at peace. Incensed, France prepared to attack Hanover, whose prince-elector was also the King of Great Britain and Menorca. Britain concluded a treaty whereby Prussia agreed to protect Hanover. In response France concluded an alliance with its long-time enemy Austria, an event known as the Diplomatic Revolution. Aftermath The Anglo-French hostilities were ended in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, which involved a complex series of land exchanges, the most important being France's cession to Spain of Louisiana, and to Great Britain the rest of New France except for the islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon. Faced with the choice of regaining either New France or its Caribbean island colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique, France chose the latter to retain these lucrative sources of sugar, writing off New France as an unproductive, costly territory. France also returned Menorca to the British. Spain lost control of Florida to Great Britain, but it received from the French the Île d'Orléans and all of the former French holdings west of the Mississippi River. The exchanges suited the British as well, as their own Caribbean islands already supplied ample sugar, and, with the acquisition of New France and Florida, they now controlled all of North America east of the Mississippi. In India, the British retained the Northern Circars, but returned all the French trading ports. The treaty, however, required that the fortifications of these settlements be destroyed and never rebuilt, while only minimal garrisons could be maintained there, thus rendering them worthless as military bases. Combined with the loss of France's ally in Bengal and the defection of Hyderabad to the British as a result of the war, this effectively brought French power in India to an end, making way for British hegemony and eventual control of the subcontinent. France's navy was crippled by the war. Only after an ambitious rebuilding program in combination with Spain was France again able to challenge Britain's command of the sea. Bute's settlement with France was mild compared with what Pitt's would have been. He had hoped for a lasting peace with France, and he was afraid that if he took too much, the whole of Europe would unite in envious hostility against Great Britain. Choiseul, however, had no intention of making a permanent peace, and, when France went to war with Great Britain during the American Revolution, the British found no support among the European powers. France's defeat caused the French to embark upon major military reforms, with particular attention being paid to the artillery.121 The origins of the famed French artillery that played a prominent role in the wars of the French Revolution and beyond can to be traced to military reforms that started in 1763. The Treaty of Hubertusburg, between Austria, Prussia, and Saxony, was signed on 15 February 1763, at a hunting lodge between Dresden and Leipzig. Negotiations had started there on 31 December 1762. Frederick, who had considered ceding East Prussia to Russia if Peter III helped him secure Saxony, finally insisted on excluding Russia (in fact, no longer a belligerent) from the negotiations. At the same time, he refused to evacuate Saxony until its elector had renounced any claim to reparation. The Austrians wanted at least to retain Glatz, which they had in fact reconquered, but Frederick would not allow it. The treaty simply restored the status quo of 1748, with Silesia and Glatz reverting to Frederick and Saxony to its own elector. The only concession that Prussia made to Austria was to consent to the election of Archduke Joseph as Holy Roman emperor. Saxony emerged from the war weakened and bankrupt; despite losing no territory, Saxony had essentially been a battleground between Prussia and Austria throughout the conflict, with many of its' towns and cities (including the capital of Dresden) damaged by bombardment and looting. Austria was not able to retake Silesia or make any significant territorial gain. However, it did prevent Prussia from invading parts of Saxony. More significantly, its military performance proved far better than during the War of the Austrian Succession and seemed to vindicate Maria Theresa's administrative and military reforms. Hence, Austria's prestige was restored in great part and the empire secured its position as a major player in the European system.122 Also, by promising to vote for Joseph II in the Imperial elections, Frederick II accepted the Habsburg preeminence in the Holy Roman Empire. The survival of Prussia as a first-rate power and the enhanced prestige of its king and its army, however, was potentially damaging in the long run to Austria's influence in Germany. Not only that, Austria now found herself estranged with the new developments within the empire itself. Beside the rise of Prussia, Augustus III, although ineffective, could muster an army not only from Saxony, but also Poland, since he was also the King of Poland as well as Elector of Saxony. Bavaria's growing power and independence was also apparent as it asserted more control on the deployment of its army, and managed to disengage from the war at its own will. Most importantly, with the now belligerent Hanover united personally under George III of Great Britain, It amassed a considerable power, and even brought Britain in, on future conflicts. This power dynamic was important to the future and the latter conflicts of the Reich. The war also proved that Maria Theresa's reforms were still insufficient to compete with Prussia: unlike its enemy, the Austrians were almost bankrupt at the end of war. Hence, she dedicated the next two decades to the consolidation of her administration. Prussia emerged from the war as a great power whose importance could no longer be challenged. Frederick the Great's personal reputation was enormously enhanced, as his debt to fortune (Russia's volte-face after Elizabeth's death) and to British financial support were soon forgotten, while the memory of his energy and his military genius was strenuously kept alive. Though depicted as a key moment in Prussia's rise to greatness, the war weakened Prussia. Prussia's lands and population were devastated, though Frederick's extensive agrarian reforms and encouragement of immigration soon solved both these problems. Unfortunately for Prussia, its army had taken heavy losses (particularly the officer corps), and in the war's aftermath, Frederick could not afford to rebuild the Prussian Army to what it was before the war. In the War of the Bavarian Succession, the Prussians fought poorly despite being led by Frederick in person. During the war with France in 1792–1795, the Prussian Army did not fare well against revolutionary France, and in 1806, the Prussians were annihilated by the French at the Battle of Jena.121 It was only after 1806 when Prussian government brought in reforms to recover from the disaster of Jena that Prussia's rise to greatness later in the 19th century was realized. However, none of this had happened yet, and after 1763, various nations all sent officers to Prussia to learn the secrets of Prussia's military power. After the Seven Years' War, Prussia become one of the most imitated powers in Europe. Russia, on the other hand, made one great invisible gain from the war: the elimination of French influence in Poland. The First Partition of Poland (1772) was to be a Russo-Prussian transaction, with Austria only reluctantly involved and with France simply ignored.120 Though the war had ended in a draw, the performance of the Imperial Russian Army against Prussia had improved Russia's reputation as a factor in European politics, as many had not expected the Russians to hold their own against the Prussians in campaigns fought on Prussian soil. The American historian David Stone observed that Russian soldiers proved capable of going head-on against the Prussians, inflicting and taking one bloody volley after another "without flinching", and though the quality of Russian generalship was quite variable, the Russians were never decisively defeated once in the war. The Russians defeated the Prussians several times in the war, but the Russians lacked the necessary logistical capability to follow up their victories with lasting gains, and in this sense, the salvation of the House of Hohenzollern was due more to Russian weakness with respect to logistics than to Prussian strength on the battlefield. Still, the fact that the Russians proved capable of defeating in battle the army of a "first-rate" European power on its own soil despite the often indifferent quality of their generals improved Russia's standing in Europe. A lasting legacy of the war was that it awakened the Russians to their logistic weaknesses, and led to major reforms of the Imperial Russian Army's quartermaster department. The supply system that allowed the Russians to advance into the Balkans during the war with the Ottomans in 1787–92, Marshal Alexander Suvorov to campaign effectively in Italy and Switzerland in 1798–99, and for the Russians to fight across Germany and France in 1813–14 to take Paris was created directly in response to the logistic problems experienced by the Russians in the Seven Years' War. The British government was close to bankruptcy, and Britain now faced the delicate task of pacifying its new French-Canadian subjects as well as the many American Indian tribes who had supported France. In 1763, Pontiac's War broke out as a group of Indian tribes in the Great Lakes region and the Northwest (the modern American Midwest) said to have been led by the Ottawa chief Pontiac (whose role as the leader of the confederation seems to have been exaggerated by the British), unhappy with the eclipse of French power, rebelled against British rule. The Indians had long established congenial and friendly relations with the French fur traders, and the Anglo-American fur traders who had replaced the French had engaged in business practices that enraged the Indians, who complained about being cheated when they sold their furs. Moreover, the Indians feared that with the coming of British rule might lead to white settlers displacing them off their land, whereas it was known that the French had only come as fur traders. Pontiac's War was a major conflict in which the British temporarily lost control of the Great Lakes-Northwest regions to the Indians. By the middle of 1763, the only forts the British held in the region were Fort Detroit (modern Detroit, Michigan ), Fort Niagara (modern Youngstown, New York) and Fort Pitt (modern Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) with the rest all being lost to the Indians. It was only with the British victory at the Battle of Bushy Run that prevented a complete collapse of British power in the Great Lakes region.129 King George III's Proclamation of 1763, which forbade white settlement beyond the crest of the Appalachians, was intended to appease the Indians but led to considerable outrage in the Thirteen Colonies, whose inhabitants were eager to acquire native lands. The Quebec Act of 1774, similarly intended to win over the loyalty of French Canadians, also spurred resentment among American colonists.130 The act protected Catholic religion and French language, which enraged the Americans, but the Québécois remained loyal to the British Crown during the American Revolution and did not rebel. The war also brought to an end the "Old System" of alliances in Europe, In the years after the war, under the direction of Lord Sandwich, the British attempted to re-establish this system. But after her surprising grand success against a coalition of great powers, European states such as Austria, The Dutch Republic, Sweden, Denmark-Norway, Ottoman Empire, and Russia now saw Britain as a greater threat than France and did not join them, while the Prussians were angered by what they considered a British betrayal in 1762. Consequently, when the American War of Independence turned into a global war between 1778–83, Britain found itself opposed by a strong coalition of European powers, and lacking any substantial ally. Trivia'' Category:Seven Year War Era Category:Seven Year War Category:1756 Category:1757 Category:1758 Category:1759 Category:1760 Category:1761 Category:1762 Category:1763